Heroin gives birth to new problem

The scene police found inside the Minersville home early this year was remarkable for its depravity.

There were at least three children, roughly 3 to 5 years old, playing inside rooms strewn with syringes, said borough Police Chief Michael Combs.

“The place was a disaster,” said Combs. “When children are in that kind of environment, they are doomed from the beginning. What chance do they have?”

On Thursday, Combs gave his verbal support to the formal request of a Berks County nonprofit, The Center for Children's Justice, for a task force to study the effects of the heroin and prescription drug crisis on children.

The center, led by founder Cathleen Palm of Jefferson Township, made the request in a letter Wednesday to Gov. Tom Wolf and six legislative leaders. The letter was signed by dozens of officials and citizens from across the state.

Wolf spokesman Jeff Sheridan said the governor received the letter but no specific discussions had been held about it.

“By all means it is a problem,” Sheridan said of the surge in heroin and prescription painkiller abuse. “The governor is always open to a diversity of ideas on addiction.”

Combs, who time and again has seen children impacted by drug problems in his Schuylkill County community, said, “That is where our focus needs to be.”

Release of the letter coincided by chance with a town hall meeting on the heroin crisis held Wednesday night at Tamaqua Middle School. Schuylkill County Judge James Goodman spoke at the event and cited statistics that showed the Schuylkill rate of having children placed in homes other than that of their parents is nearly twice the state average.

On Thursday, Goodman called the formation of a task force a good idea.

Palm supplied statistics that showed the number of children who suffer from Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome when born to Medicaid-covered mothers in Pennsylvania increased from 1,080 in 2010 to 1,970 in 2014. The infants were exposed to opiate or narcotic drugs during the mother's pregnancy and at least some experienced withdrawal symptoms after birth.

Palm said the infants are irritable, cry frequently and their feet may shake rapidly. Their problems, she said, are caused not just by heroin but frequently by legal medicines used to treat heroin addiction.

“Part of the reason you see so many babies with NAS is not just because of heroin but because of methadone,” she said. “A baby, a young child's brain, is 80 percent developed by the time they are 3.”

Signers of the center's letter to state leaders included 10 elected county coroners and the executive directors of Support Center for Child Advocates, the Network of Victim Assistance and CASA Youth Advocates Inc.

As outlined by Palm, the proposed task force would identify strategies to prevent infant exposure to drugs; improve outcomes for pregnant and parenting women trying to recover from addiction; and promote the health and safety of substance-exposed infants and others at risk of abuse or neglect.